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By This Poet

It's a gift, this cloudless November morning
warm enough to walk without a jacket
along your favorite path. The rhythmic shushing
of your feet through fallen leaves should be
enough to quiet the mind, so it surprises you
when you catch yourself telling off your boss
for a decade of accumulated injustices,
all the things you've never said circling inside you.
The rising wind pulls you out of it,
and you look up to see a cloud of leaves
wheeling in sunlight, flickering against the blue
and lifting above the treetops, as if the whole day
were sighing, Let it go, let it go,
for this moment at least, let it all go.

The night before my father diedI dreamed he was back home,and I in my old roomon the third floor, and hewas calling up to mefrom the bottom of the stairssome advice I couldn’t hearor recall the next day when,standing over himback in the ICUfull of the chirping of machineswe had decided to unplug,I remembered the dreamand heard him call my name.